


good morning, hypocrite

by earthbending (hopeheavy), hopeheavy



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:12:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeheavy/pseuds/earthbending, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeheavy/pseuds/hopeheavy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Switch. Subject change. Think of something else, anything else.</p>
<p>His counselors call it a kind of conditioning: avoidance of the negative, embracing the positive. Creating healthy habits is just another step to healing, they say.</p>
<p>But what about him? Hinata stares through the glass every time he walks past it, but doesn’t allow himself to stop. That’s too focused, too intentional. Too desperate. The passing means he can still move on, he can still move past this, he’s not tethered to that pale, broken boy on the bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> years later and here i am, still torn up about these kids. this is going to be a multi-chapter fic after the events of sdr2! obviously, it's chock-full of spoilers. there will be cameos from some of the cast, but mainly focused on komaeda & hinata!

The world is neither cruel nor forgiving; he’s become well-versed in the surprising simplicity of this fact. Universal laws harbor no personal bias, and he is nothing special. And he is nothing special. And he is nothing -

(When he thinks it, it’s not the usual; it’s sung slippery, a gasping kind of declaration slung between two parched lips and the glass-glint of pale eyes. 

Hinata clenches his eyes shut and counts backwards from fifty until the vision, the voice, dissolves.) 

There’s nothing wrong with ordinariness; he says it every morning, every evening, every time he starts to slip into a darker part of himself -- the kind that sets him on edge, that scares him. Hinata no longer knows what he is capable of, and it’s not the brimming sort of possibility that pushed him towards Hope’s Peak. It’s nightmare fodder, it’s… 

Switch. Subject change. Think of something else, anything else. 

His counselors call it a kind of conditioning: avoidance of the negative, embracing the positive. Creating healthy habits is just another step to healing, they say. 

But what about him? Hinata stares through the glass every time he walks past it, but doesn’t allow himself to stop. That’s too focused, too intentional. Too desperate. The passing means he can still move on, he can still move past this, he’s not tethered to that pale, broken boy on the bed. 

“Why would I be?” Hinata catches himself muttering one afternoon, catches his footsteps slowing as his gaze roves over the silhouette that hasn’t changed in weeks. 

No one’s there, but he feels his face warm -- he avoids Komaeda’s room for the next few days. 

  


He still wakes in a cold sweat most nights, despite his innermost resolutions. Despite the fact that he goes to sleep still mumbling, _It wasn't real. It wasn't real._

But it was real. Real enough for the images of blood-stained corpses, faces drained of any life or expression, to be imprinted on the back of his eyelids. 

(He visits the hospital wing every day, if not for _him._ For others. For the rest who have yet to wake up. For Koizumi and Tanaka, for Mioda, for Pekoyama. Hinata walks past the same sheet of glass every afternoon and pretends it isn’t physically straining to keep his eyes focused straight ahead.) 

They’re working on bringing Nanami back, Naegi's promised him. Maybe not quite the same - maybe in a computer program, or something like that. It’s lonely without her, especially, not that he's necessarily _alone._ The members of the Future Foundation are there, of course. Sonia greets him with a smile and sweet words when they cross paths - she’s almost always in the hospital wing, sitting at Tanaka’s bedside, reading to him, speaking to him, adjusting his blankets. Souda, he’s noticed, has been too pale for weeks, with dark circles under his eyes, his arms constantly crossed. Kuzuryuu is quiet except for the occasions when Hinata can corner him alone, wherein the two exchange soft conversation - the most genuine kind Hinata has anymore. 

He sometimes sees Kuzuryuu standing in front of the glass, his knuckles white where they grip the railing outside the room labeled 'PEKOYAMA PEKO'. Sometimes Hinata will clear his throat, and Kuzuryuu will startle, and flush, and move along. Sometimes he just turns around and goes back the way he came. 

It isn’t easy for any of them. 

Hinata’s conflict lies in the way he’s so drawn to standing, like Kuzuryuu does, behind the glass, watching as if something miraculous will happen at any moment. It lies in the fact that he _needs_ it, needs to see Komaeda stirring, to see some sliver of life still in him besides the mechanic beeping of the heart monitor. 

_And for what?_ He isn’t sure. For answers, maybe. More than Komaeda had given them in that video. If he sits down, if he looks Komaeda in those unnerving eyes, if he demands it, maybe he can make sense of it all. A static ‘why’ doesn’t shake the image of Komaeda sprawled on the warehouse floor, his eyes shocked-wide. Nothing shakes it. 

Maybe he just wants to know Komaeda has a second chance, after all of his self-inflicted suffering. 

How funny; the others would probably hate him for even thinking like that. After all, who was it who was instrumental in starting the mutual killing in the first place? Who manipulated them with fluid ease, all the while with a smile on his face? 

He tries to convince himself to be angry like this, with a neat list of Komaeda’s many, many faults, of all the grievances they’d acquired, but he never manages to get there. He’s too exhausted for anger, and too hollow for anything more than brief, echoing pangs of sadness. 

It takes no more than four days for Hinata to give in to his urges. He stands at the glass. He clenches his fists. He prays for something to happen. 

For a long time, nothing does. 

And then everything happens at once.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a flurry of movement one day - a nurse in a stark white coat rushing past, clipboard pressed between her side and the crook of her arm. Hinata can shrug that off easily enough. There’s false alarms all the time. At the beginning, they used to give him hope; he’d perk up with his heart clogging his throat all day, until someone would finally mention it wasn’t what they’d thought. He’d pass by each room and count them off, how they all slept in static silence.

It isn’t that he’s a pessimist, but expecting the worst hurts a little bit less than constantly searching for something to hold on to.

So he moves along with nothing more than a brief, curious glance, and continues his daily - _one_  of his daily - walks through the hospital wing.

He passes by Koizumi, by Saionji, by Tanaka, whose bedside is strangely devoid of a certain princess, by Pekoyama -

The outside of Mioda’s room is the host of a commotion. Sonia, Souda, Owari, Kuzuryuu… They’re all staring at the glass. Souda’s mouth hangs sloppily open, Owari’s fists are clenched, Kuzuryuu stands silent, his expression fierce. Sonia’s cheeks are streaked with tears, and it’s she who notices Hinata first; she rushes over, takes his hands in hers. “Mioda-san has woken up…” Her voice wavers dangerously, and fresh tears start to pool. “The doctors are still examining her, but she’s awake! That means… That could mean…”

She releases him, apologizes for crying, and then she’s really going at it: these full, heart-wrenching sobs. Owari puts an arm around her, says “Let’s get you back to your room,” in between her soothing shushes. Hinata had never known Owari to be the soothing kind. They’ve all learned how to console each other, it seems.

The remaining three stand in heavy quiet.

Hinata can’t move; he’s wracking his mind, trying to wrap it around this new impossibility become reality. The doctors had said that while they were _hopeful_  - a word that still makes him freeze - there was a chance they’d never wake up. That they were all gone.

He forces his legs to walk, to carry him to the window where Kuzuryuu and Souda stand. The same room he’d walked by every day with no hint of life except the lines of the heart monitor, the occasional nurse checking in, looks like comparative chaos. He counts three doctors and six nurses - maybe seven, he can’t decide if he’s seeing an extra or if one of them is just quick - and Mioda is sitting up, looking pale and haggard and not herself at all, but awake. Alive.

Voices come from inside; Hinata hears them as if through some kind of fog.

“Do you know your name?”

Maybe a mumble, he glances back at Mioda and her brows are furrowed, like she’s concentrating. She looks at the doctor, a silent question.

“Take your time.”

“Mio… Mioda.” She takes a breath. Hinata resists the urge to press his ear against the glass, she’s so quiet. “Mioda - Ibuki.”

“And how old are you, Mioda-san?”

“That’s easy! Ibuki is -” She perks up momentarily, enough that Hinata has to look again, to make sure she’s still in a hospital gown, still with hospital staff surrounding her. Just as quickly as it had livened, Mioda’s expression darkens, grows puzzled again. “Seventeen?”

Some murmuring from the staff - the doctor jots something down on the clipboard in his lap. “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

Before he realizes it, he’s stepped away from the glass, away from the room. He’s already past the other boys by the time Souda calls out: “Hey, Hinata -?” He’s already half-running down the hall.

He wants to stop himself - wants to do damage control before he has a chance to dash his hopes so irreparably he can’t come back from it. But his heart is thumping so wildly he feels sick; instead of slowing down, Hinata begins to run in full, all the while reminding himself that it doesn’t mean anything, that one miracle never guarantees more. That he should be grateful for one. That he shouldn’t ask - shouldn’t expect - more.

Name plate: KOMAEDA NAGITO.

Chest: feeling like it might burst, or cave in. He can’t breathe.

Hinata doesn’t go to stand in front of the glass today, he doesn’t go that far. He just opens the door, he waits with the handle turned down before he swings it open wide, before he walks in. Honestly, he could stand there in that limbo forever, in between that possibility, on the precipice of maybe, just maybe, being able to talk to Komaeda again. Being able to see him awake.

“You’re pathetic,” He mutters, bites it off too soon at the end, because he hadn’t meant to say it aloud. 

He steps inside.

The heart monitor’s lines move smoothly, regularly. He can hear the air conditioning kick on. Komaeda lies still and peaceful, his hands folded just so over him.

Hinata’s stomach drops.

“Stupid,” He means to say it, this time - barks a laugh and doesn’t really care if anyone hears.

He’d known better. 

But it’s the first time he’s been in Komaeda’s room, so he might as well stay for a visit, to take a minute to get around the block in his throat.

Hinata sits in the chair at Komaeda’s bedside, the chair that’s been vacant the entire time. No one visits Komaeda. And he understands, but it makes him a little sick, anyway. He should have come in earlier, should have taken time to speak to him, even if he couldn’t hear it. He really looks like he might just be sleeping, this close - still looks unhealthy, but he was always thin.

“Hey… Komaeda.” He doesn’t know where to begin; he’s never been good at this. It’s why he hasn’t done it with the others, and anyway, they had others to do it. Sonia and Owari especially liked to go room to room and sit and talk with them whenever they had free time. Hinata, coward that he is, never did more than sit by their beds for a few minutes a piece, until he started to feel ridiculous or someone else came inside. It’s almost harder to try for Komaeda, but doesn’t he deserve that much? Doesn’t he deserve for someone to try for him, even a little?

He’s hovering over the answer to that question, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is Hinata wants to, more than anything.

“Sorry I haven’t… Uh, visited yet. I don’t really have an excuse, except I was, I don’t know, scared?” He laughs, dry. It’s embarrassing to admit, even to someone he’s pretty sure can’t hear him. “I guess I was hoping you’d just wake up one day, and not… visiting you somehow made it feel like it was more likely to happen. Or maybe it just made me feel less pathetic. Doesn’t make a difference, does it? Because you haven’t, and here I am, and it feels like it’s been forever, and I wish you would just…”

He'd had trouble with how to start. Now it feels like he can’t _stop_.

“Mioda-san woke up… Just a little while ago. Still don’t know why or how, I think. Somehow it made me feel like, if I came in, you’d be awake too. I’d kind of given up on the whole thing, and I knew - I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but even then, I really, really thought you would be. It’s sort of a hard pill to swallow now.”

Komaeda’s still breathing as evenly as ever. His face is oddly blank - he’s never seen it so devoid of expression, whether than infuriating, self-assured smirk or that nervous grimace or the peaceful smile that had once made him feel calm. He’d take any of them now, anything over this.

Hinata slips his hand over Komaeda’s where they lay. He grips his fingers and squeezes.

Stupidly, he expects that to work, too.

“I don’t know why… I don’t know why I’m like this. You did some horrible things. You made me feel… horrible about myself, even. But sometimes I feel like I understand. Sometimes I think I get it, you know? And what am I supposed to do about that? I can’t talk to anyone else. Nanami’s gone. You’re gone. So what am I supposed to do, except wait for you? I just want to talk about it - I just want to ask you things. I just want to hear you explain. So _why won’t you just - wake - up?_ ”

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking him until he’s through; Hinata sits back, wide-eyed, surprised at himself. All at once, he jumps out of the chair and makes his way back to the door, and he’s the one shaking, now.

He steps through, into the hallway again, but peeks through the sliver of the open door one last time.

  
“Please,” Hinata says, and then it’s closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe it's taken me like six months to get this done, but i've been busy! i honestly hate exposition but at this point this thing is kind of writing itself and i'm just along for the ride, so sorry if it's a bit slow! that being said, i hope you enjoy it anyway. also, i've made a komahina-centric sideblog on tumblr, feel free to follow if you'd like! xo
> 
> http://hopeheavy.tumblr.com/ komahina blog  
> http://earthbending.tumblr.com/ main blog


End file.
